Meant to have an update last week and we will have one soon. We have a secure version of the site mostly ready to go and the site has been ported over to a new server for some time.

The beta version of the new site with the new design will be available to a few users we are inviting to play around with it. We had the lightning session with me and Brian last week to go over all the little things that we found that we wanted to change before the beta and all of those fixes should be done this Wednesday. The banner is taking a lot of time because we want to get it right.

This is based entirely on scouting. We've been watching Shea Patterson's tape, and we've seen Peters play, and our slack conversations have been going back and forth a bunch since Patterson popped up, and we're all seeing the same things. Brian's going to have a big post on this eventually so it hasn't hit the main page yet, but the short of it is Patterson shouldn't have been a 5-star, but he's fun to watch and if he wins the job he could do well in a spread-ish version of the offense. Closest Michigan comp is Tate Forcier. If he goes in right now however he's going to look more like O'Korn than anything else.

2. There are tweaks to the offense that adapt to the quarterbacks--you saw this year they adjusted the offense to match the QB. But this can be overstated. Patterson will get more of an O'Korn-like job I think. But that's not dramatically different than Peters. It'll probably be more about what each is good at in practice--like individual plays.

The divisions right now are de facto small conferences, with an agreement with another small conference to play each other in a rotating schedule. I don't like it because Michigan is no longer in a conference with Northwestern, Wisconsin, Illinois, Purdue, Minnesota, etc.

The righteous thing to do would be to have an NCAA rule that everyone in a conference must play each other every year, end of story. If you want to go up to 14 teams, you need 13 conference games.

Divisions really only exist to produce those conference championship games, but how often has one division been a cakewalk while another was a nightmare? How often has the representative of a division not been the best team from that division? Divisions suck.

My pet solution to this is to have no divisions, "pods" of rivals who play each other every year, and then one or multiple conference showcase games at the end of the year to play the best games that weren't played. So Michigan-MSU-OSU would all play each other every season, and rotate through the rest of the entire conference. The pod games would be on rivalry weeks: last weekend of September, last weekend of October, and last weekend of November. You get one pod rival at home and one on the road per year.

Here's a sample of what Michigan's schedules might look like for the next decade, using the currently constituted Big Ten:

2018

2019

2020

2021

2022

2023

2024

2025

2026

2027

Wis

@Wis

Neb

@Neb

PSU

@PSU

Iowa

@Iowa

Ill

@Ill

@Iowa

Iowa

@Ill

Ill

@RU

RU

@PU

PU

@NW

NW

PU

@PU

NW

@NW

Minn

@Minn

IU

@IU

MD

@MD

@IU

IU

@MD

MD

@Wis

Wis

@Neb

Neb

@PSU

PSU

MSU

@MSU

MSU

@MSU

MSU

@MSU

MSU

@MSU

MSU

@MSU

Neb

@Neb

PSU

@PSU

Iowa

@Iowa

Ill

@Ill

RU

@RU

@Ill

Ill

@RU

RU

@PU

PU

@NW

NW

@Minn

Minn

NW

@NW

Minn

@Minn

IU

@IU

MD

@MD

Wis

@Wis

@OSU

OSU

@OSU

OSU

@OSU

OSU

@OSU

OSU

@OSU

OSU

If you care about the minutia, the pods were M-MSU-OSU, Wis-Iowa-Minn, PSU-MD-RU, and then IU-PU and IL-NW shared Nebraska. The other option I toyed around with was making IU-PU-IL-NW and Neb-Wis-Minn-Iowa each four-team pods and giving a protected rivalry to each of the three-team pods. But that gets messy without a 10th conference game.

You're right about a three-teamer. I was thinking though that it's more unfair to give one of those three teams a bye than it is to give the next tier a shot to join them.

One thing about a variable playoff is the committee is going to lean toward more teams getting in for $ reasons, and I think that's fine because more football, and a hard cap of six is not too large of a field.

You may be right. It seems weird to give that to the WLB who's also got run support. I chalked it up to Schiano running old Jerry Sandusky stuff from the Penn State "Hero" Cover 3, one of the first defenses to use a hybird safety as a linebacker for just this reason.

The thing I saw to blame Baker is watch how the CB, Denzel Ward, is covering the gap when Baker bails. Doesn't that look like a hole defender to you? The two LBs and Ward all moved in sync and Baker took off first while Ward is peeking into the C gap like it's his job to run down O'Korn if he tries to escape. If Ward is the deep guy, and the TE is pass-blocking, why would Ward be moving INSIDE like that and not getting back to his zone? Hypothetical Deep 1/3rd Ward would have to think a delayed TE release is covered by the DE in the flat and Hypothetical Hole Defender Baker. And I don't think Ward is even looking at the TE--he's peeking into the backfield. That behavior makes so much more sense if he's the hole defender.

My thought process was if Ward's acting like the hole, he's probably the hole, and if this seems incredibly weird, well, I've read those Sandusky playbooks and there's a ton of weird zone blitz coverage disguises in there. And the last thing is just watching these two players all year I get the sense that Baker is the kind of guy who'd make that gamble--stepping into a gap he's not responsible for to make a big play--while Ward is more sound.

Anyway that's my defense of what I went with, but I can't guarantee I'm right and I'm glad you pointed this out.

My reactions to your reactions and this is dummy text because I know the up/down vote will get in the way if I start a bulleted or numbered list and yes this is something we are fixing on the new site:

Receivers also improve dramatically year to year. I still think they need a real WRs coach and I think Erik Campbell is available and good at this.

O'Korn, I gather mostly from Sam talking about him, is way better at practice than on the field. Even though Harbaugh lets his QBs get hit in practice, JOK knows Gary and Winovich aren't going to kill him. He's way more confident in his reads and makes use of his legs more often. Peters was a C/C+ guy; I think O'Korn looks like a B- in practice and then becomes a D- on the field. Remember Joe Bolden? Also coaches are naturally loathe to pull a guy once they've made their decision to start him. That has all sorts of negative things, and also it's human nature to try to make the thing you have work instead of changing (think how long people stay in bad jobs).

Fortunately OL improve year to year even more than WRs, usually. Even Kugler went from "we're going to play a true freshman over you" in 2016 to starting at center this year. Brian wrote in 28 Tickets that Bredeson's follies at pass pro are way more excusable if you think of him as a redshirt freshman right now.

I appreciate but strongly disagree with this. I've been around a lot of coaches, and I lean on a few of them to get these writeups right. It's one thing to translate the things they do into layman's terms so a wide audience can understand it, and that's a niche it's taken me a long time to get semi-competent at. It's another thing entirely to coach this stuff on even a high school level.

Even at what I do, I'm still nowhere near Gold Standard Chris B. Brown from Smart Football, nor even close to guys like SB Nation's Ian Boyd, Ross Fulton from Buckeygrove, or Kyle Jones from Eleven Warriors, or many others who fill this niche at other sites.

Maybe this is a mistake I make in writing: by simplifying this stuff I make it appear way more simple than it is. It is very wrong to think any one of us could step in an perform half as well as John O'Korn. Look at his footwork, the timing of the handoff, how his head came around, how he's got his weight balanced so he can throw it even with a DT about to hit him. Even the way he takes the hit to avoid injury is coached into him. I don't know the first thing about teaching a guy to do any of that stuff. And that's one dropback motion--he has to learn 7-step drops, and 3-step drops, and shotgun snaps, and and and and and and and...and I don't even know most of the nuances I should be including in this series.

Football, like writing, is a craft. I don't know a tenth of the nuances of football. My craft is writing. I think about things like weighting prepositions, cadence, theming, word economy, annoyance and surprise, shading. I know how to introduce an idea without distracting you from what I'm talking about then, but that sneaky kernel will fire off later when I come back to it. I know marketing language and cliches so I can avoid them, because those will make a reader fill in the blanks and ignore the idea. There's a reason I had seven 'and's in a row in the previous paragraph. That's what I do. I'm not a football coach; I'm a football writer.

This is literally the argument I was trying to refute with my whole article. This part in particular:

In the grand scheme of things, this was't actually that complicated—it's not a Kindergarten read, but we're still in the realm of things high school quarterbacks do all the time.

and this graphic:

Are there to show why "That was too complicated for O'Korn" is--in my, let's call it "undergrad-level" opinion--an incorrect take. It's only a little less complicated than "find the defender and the 2-3 receivers stretching his zone".

I mean, what SHOULD Michigan be running then? Ohio State is a top 5 defense. You're down by four with 2 and a half minutes left in the game, and unlikely to get another drive against an offense that specializes in running the ball for 6 YPC when your defense has been shouldering the lion's share of the game for 57.5 minutes. Harbaugh and his staff emptied the drawer in this game. O'Korn is your quarterback. His entire career this is the thing he's done best.

What gets my frustrated about the "O'Korn shouldn't have been asked to do that" take is it's easy to arm-chair this after the fact. But say O'Korn makes the right pass. Now it's 1st down Michigan at the 50. Or say O'Korn comes out and notices the free safety running away from Gentry and throws the bomb, and now it's 1st down at the OSU 20 or something. If you want to beat Ohio State these are the plays you have to make. Nobody gets to frippery their way to a win in the greatest rivalry in sports. You have to play some goddamn football.

I think that is one of those things where nobody has Insider info and everybody is making an educated guess. The only person to report it is Spath, who tweeted that Malzone intends to graduate in spring and transfer. I wouldn't be surprised if that happened, based only on Spath is a credible guy.

This was my only coaching complaint, which in fairness is being made against one of best all-around coaching jobs in college football. These guys had themselves a DAY. Sticking to man defense on 3rd and forever however was weird. It wasn't like it was a crazy blitz they used--just plain Cover 1.

I'm gonna go through the people who responded to him so viciously too. Maizen wasn't wrong on all his angry takes he was just an asshole about them, and it was an invitation to making every one of those threads a clusterfuck. When people see the name itself it invites nasty argument and ruins any credibility of what was said. Maizen is responsible for that because of the tone he was using.

I'd rather he start a new account randomly and present the same takes without adding unnecessary controversiality. Try saying "might" and "I wonder if" more. Anticipate reasonable disagreement and acknowledge holes in your arguments.

Not out of nowhere, not something we wanted to see. No Michigan fan needs a reminder of why having more than one good quarterback is important. For Speight though he has one year of eligibility left, and will have to win back the job from a sophomore Peters coming off the bowl game (I hope) or a redshirt freshman McCaffrey. Speight would have to win that really going away because if they're equal Michigan will go with the guy with more upside whom they can get three years out of.

It's going to be Wilton Speight, who's been working with Grant Perry and a few other receivers on the side with Pep Hamilton just for this.

Actually, no, Brandon Peters will be back--his head is fine and concussion was ruled out last week but we wanted you to think that he's out so you wouldn't be prepared for us to unleash a Double-TE downfield attack on you.

Yeah, fine, I'm lying, it's John O'Korn, who's been practicing all year as a zone read option QB and that's why he looks so unprepared all the time when you've seen him in since the offense he's been practicing isn't the one he's had to run.

But in reality we're pulling the redshirt off of McCaffrey for this game and that was the plan all along.

Dude, c'mon. I was describing how they use him. They play mostly Cover 1 high: that's man defense and a safety high in the middle of the field. However like Michigan in '97 they use that high safety more like a Cover 2 guy, covering 1/2 of the field, and leave Ward on an island the way Michigan left Woodson on an island. I also talked about how this has gone: against the one excellent deep receiver they've faced this year Ward got exposed and they had to give him safety help. He shut down Felton Davis, handled Moore's screens well (see the Gus Johnson play) and didn't face Malik Turner. Comparing a guy to Charles Woodson isn't saying he's Charles Woodson: it's providing a basis of comparison for how they utilize him. Ward gets a 1st round grade on all the NFL sites and is in line to be an all-American. On the tape he's targeted all the time and gives up virtually nothing versus bad passing games. If you don't want that kind of analysis, skip these articles.

If we're being dickish enough to call Urban a failure for 1 B1G championship in 5 tries, we might as well go all the way. Anyway who'd they have to play that year? Michigan was their toughest game, and Michigan led that game most of the way despite Al Borges coaching probably the worst game of his career.

Their pass defense is propped up like everyone's in the Big Ten because Big Ten passers can't pass. PSU's cornerbacks got destroyed by OSU and MSU. Since Michigan's cornerbacks appear to be actually good I went with one of the above. My other option was Indiana's defense, which is more simliar to Michigan's, but that was the first game of the season.

You need more of a hook than that. Nobody cares about your dynasty unless there's something particularly relevant in it. Like if you got a blogger from every school in D-I to edit their teams and you played this out and did a writeup with highlights and you're really really funny about it.

This football team would be good enough to luck into a 9-win Big Ten East championship or drop to 7-5 with bad luck. I don't consider 2015 Michigan State to be "good"--that's just football randomness creating a peak result. The same could have happened to this Michigan team this year--it doesn't mean it was likely to.

"Good" is where Ohio State is at this year. They've had two bad games but they're #1 to S&P+. "Good" is where Michigan was last year, when some bad breaks against Iowa and Ohio State and Florida State marred a team that could have stood in there against Alabama and Clemson.

My only problem with Ace is draftageddon. Like me he is hyper competitive and watches a lot of Big Ten football outside of Michigan. That series would be much less time-consuming if I wasn't going up against a master every summer.

I've done this multiple times and it's better than you realize. After the podcast he and I sat in the back room of the Bo Store talking about Bump and Bo and Lloyd and...man. Yeah nobody in the world has the passion that Sap has for this stuff and it's infectious.

I thought I've been pretty on this year. I said Maryland D was soft but 6 YPC soft not big plays soft, and their Offense was terrible. Minnesota I made fun of Demry Croft for being not altogether there and the coaches not really coaching for this year and that was exact. Minnesota's defense I said the defensive backs are poor and give up big run plays and now that's canon. Rutgers's offense I overrated their left tackle and was perfect everywhere else. Rutgers defense I said Michigan could run power for days and they did.

I don't think any of those were overly positive: I think I correctly scouted teams that Michigan would handle easily and Michigan did.

You got a problem with McCray, Bush, Hudson, and Furbush? Don Brown would like to hear all about it.

We've got good players. Other teams get good players too. Last year on the outside they had Watt's little brother and Biegel, who was a high 4-star. Dooley was a high 3-star who chose Wisconsin over Penn State. The real finds are Edwards, a guy Dave Aranda plucked from nowheresville Illinois, and the walk-ons Cichy and Connelly.

One thing Wisconsin can offer that Michigan doesn't is lots of linebacker spots. We're out there recruiting rush DEs while the Badgers just accumulate as many linebacker objects as they can and let the good ones come to the surface. Given there's hardly any rotation now since Orr's been out we might have finally seen the bottom of the current barrel.

But anyway they've had good coaching, especially with their last two DCs who immediately were offered $1M/year jobs and who are both good at turning up LB talent. Michigan does the same on DL--Mo Hust, Ryan Glasgow, Michael Dwumfour, Matt Godin, Chase Winovich, Kwity Paye...

Cole's downfield blocking is a problem for opposing defenses. Michigan doesn't get to access that much but when something's been set up on the backside Harbaugh has been hitting it for a big play on the Cole side because he knows he's going to get supurb downfield blocking. Cole can mirror most linebackers in space, which is a rare, rare thing. His pass protection is good enough, not elite. Once in awhile there's a college player mistake.

He won't ever be a shield player. But I've been over this several times and I still find it useful to list Cole as a star. The stars on Michigan players are not for rewarding our players--they're for establishing a baseline of comparison for the opponents we are scouting. If I put a cyan circle around a center, he's worse than Kugler. If I leave a star off a left tackle, he's not on Mason Cole's level. I expect you've seen Michigan's players enough to have an idea of what they do over the course of a game and can extrapolate that information to the players I'm watching and trying to convey.

The 3-3-5 and 3-4 are different animals. The 3-3-5 is more like a 4-2-5 nickel defense that simply replaces one defensive linemen for a surprise blitzer somewhere. That's why Michigan can go seamlessly between the two. These defenses will shut down most primo run gaps by having a blitzballs defender of some sort jack-knifing into it, and then the offense has to try to find and pry open a gap that a coverage linebacker is responsible for to run through.

Wisconsin's 3-4 is a real 3-4: the DL are told to dominate the guy they're lined up across so the LBs can read and clean up. The offense has to beat those guys first and foremost, and then win a one-on-one battle with the linebackers to get to the point of attack before the LB does or overpower the LB to create space.

The massacre is really good but no way am I buying a keg of that and sending a bunch of Michigan fans into an Ohio State game. Plus can you even get it out of a keg or do you have to scoop it with a spoon?

The whole point of bankruptcy is the insolvent person is saying "Look, there's no way I can handle this and I might do something really awful if I'm not relieved of this debt," and that puts them at the mercy of a bankruptcy court (and the company assigned to oversee them. Being in bankruptcy means you need to be removed from making decisions because you suck at it. Your decisions--including your CEO hire--are by definition suspect.

So if they have a bad contract, that's absolutely the kind of thing the bankruptcy court is there to take care of. They're not going by a book--they're also supposed to make moral judgments and ethical judgments about, e.g., don't give the multi-millionaire millions of dollars then liquidate the retirements of 10,000 employees. If you don't want a judge selected by the people telling you where to put your assets, don't ask the people to eat your debt.

So while these things can get really complicated--far more than a headline geared toward making people angry can convey--there is still a very obvious moral action that supercedes the weeds. Other interested parties here might be wealthy too--manufacturers, rich dudes who leased them buildings, etc., and it's a fair argument that a person's previously accumulated wealth shouldn't be used against them. But with bankruptcy, the whole ballgame is money: we don't have enough, so who gets what's left after we sell off all of the assets? When you consider the executives did the most to put their company into bankruptcy, and the people they owe were acting and delivering their goods and services on good faith, it's not THAT hard to say "Yeah, screw the execs." Otherwise bankruptcy becomes just a trick for legal thievery.

I can only tell you what I saw, which was this guy getting blow'd up by defensive ends good and bad.

I can't account for PFF's OT grading anymore because there have been so many incongruities lately. They seem to be valuing a 1-second protection with the ball out as much as a 4-second protection against a killer DE. My guess is they're crediting him for his run blocking, which is fine, while I was trying to be consistent with how I graded JBB.

I watched two games and he was bad so I have to stand by what I watched. We'll see if he holds up against Gary and if my eyes or PFF's grading holds up.

That is an oversight on my part. Sorry. If it matters to you, the stars for coordinators and coaches are a little bit tongue in cheek, since they were invented to account for Mark Dantonio's quixotic approach to Michigan.

Since they're the only coaches to get fired I think it's fair. Elton Wieman sorta got fired too I guess but Yost was Barry Alvarez'ing when Wieman was coaching, and that was kind of a mutual breakup. Wieman by the way went on to coach at Princeton when we stole Crisler from them and then become the AD in Denver. He was the main driver in making facemasking a penalty (because guys weren't wearing them to avoid getting yanked by 'em).

Get in on a white elephant that I'm a part of, because I am the guy who always buys hats. And since it's declasse to put your own book into a white elephant I'm the only Michigan fan in the world this year who can't buy the thing that I should for the white elephant.

No. We made this just as a print book, and it's not like there's a rush to get it read. Making a kindle edition takes me a lot of work and I'd rather spend that time writing on MGoBlog since we're at the season high point.

I am having to relearn everything I knew about the hockey secondary market because the last few years you could get in for free if you knew anybody who goes to games and before that there were always a few tickets available on the walk in for 10 bucks. Also I was a hockey season ticket holder in college when I went to the majority of hockey games in my life so I don't have that same 20 years of scrounging knowledge.

I sat in the OSU student section for 2012 on tickets that an MGoReader/OSU professor got me. We had a hipster Buckeye spit mustard at us. Last year we sat at the bottom of the Michigan fan section and I had two Trumpers threatening to kill us. It's good to see the professors trying to change the culture, but they've got a long way to go. Ohio State's program culture is literally "Fuck Michigan" and they rightfully believe that intimidating road fans helps preserve their home field advantage. Sometimes nowadays after a particularly heinous thing happens another Ohio State fan will come and say "I'm sorry don't think of all of us like that." And those people ought to be acknowledged. They're not the ones who leave an impression, though.

Michigan doesn't have that culture, and never will I hope. What we could do however is drop the prices on the tickets, so that it's not like like you're losing hundreds of dollars if you give them away to a friend.

We're seeing that level of production and so is PFF and so are other coaches. Gary's playing better than Winovich. Winovich is playing at an All-American level. I'd put those guys up there with Bosa as tops in the country at their position right now.

i've got nothing to go on other than a quarter against Rutgers that I couldn't cap because it was on a janky BTN2Go replay. I try to save the marks for guys I have at least some scouting on, unless like the RT situation this summer there were numerous arrows pointing toward it being a thing.

YouTube changed their policies with regards to music. If you use something that's copyrighted the copyright holder will monetize your video, adding all sorts of ads. If you use two or more songs like that they will take the audio off your video. When people send me songs that are not copyrighted I can use them. This week nobody did and I can't go around stealing other people's music for the reason I just described.

I've used made up synonyms and constructions, including bigly, for years and years. It's a running internal joke that goes back to when I got bored after the umpteenth chart of typing "click to see a bigger version."

Pretty much. Guessing what Michigan will do. Crawford ended up being out last week and I don't have any intel if he's back. And DPJ is starting to get to the point where we don't have to worry about people saying he deserves a cyan circle, so I'm punting on that until we don't have to think about it.

That sounds cool but I'm not a coach and certainly not on Michigan's staff. The only examples I can point you to are from Bo's era. One was Greg Dooley did an interview with Bo's [not the] offensive coordinator Jerry Hanlon. Hanlon said they used the early part of the week for fundamentals and the coaches spent Sundays and Mondays pouring over film, then would meet on Monday night to get Bo's approval on their gameplan. The other is Dr. Sap's article from 2016 on the origins of the dime defense. The latter is the most instructive. It's then DBs coach Lloyd Carr recalling how Michigan installed the dime defense:

“My recollection is that we put it in on Wednesday. We would go over our run coverages on Monday. Tuesdays we would hit,” Lloyd Carr told me. With Friday practices being a walk-through session, the defense essentially had one or two days to get this defense down.

In another section Carr talked about how he'd gone over every single play Purdue runs during film session except one (he ran out of time). It turned out to be a huge play (a bubble screen).

Extrapolating, it seems at least in Bo's time the assistants got several days to go over film and develop a gameplan--the coordinators given considerable or total leeway. Meanwhile they'd coach fundamentals and coach out mistakes from last week. Tuesday the scout team would be running the opponent's plays, and Wednesday they would focus in on a few things from the playbook and practice them against the Scout team. Then they'd finish that on Thursday and Friday would be nailing down the details.

2nd and 1 isn't a "let's get the first down" situation and from what I've watched of Higdon he's not a "if the first down's there I'll take it" guy even on 3rd downs.

I do suspect that the weird play they ran a few times where they're running a trap and doubling the frontside DE and folding the backside tackle inside is drawn up to reliably get at least 1 yard and possible break for a bazillion. They ran it on 2nd and 1 twice before running it on 4th and 1. And I think they ran it again later on 2nd and 1.

"Counter" can be shorthand for "Counter Trey" because Counter Trey is so popular (and run out of all kinds of sets, as an option, with the QB, paired with RPOs, etc.)

But the way I define it is Counter is anything with counter action. That can be a lot of things but in an under-center offense it's usually the quarterback dropping back facing the opposite way the play will go (putting the RB to the backside when he starts). Counter action could also be that thing PSU was doing to Michigan where the RB and QB look like they're going to come together for a zone read mesh and then the bounce outside to a speed option. Counter action gets linebackers who've been peeking into the backfield for their keys to step the wrong way.

[pause so ReadYourGuard can reply "Read your guard!" here]

Counter Trey uses counter action in the backfield and "Trey" blocking. It's this play where you use counter to freeze the defense while bringing both a pulling guard and a fullback/TE/H-back/somebody around from the other side.

In short, "Counter" is backfield motion that fakes a run one way before running the other way. "Counter Trey" is the play that everybody runs.

ITP has a great article on it: http://insidethepylon.com/film-study/film-study-u/offense-film-study-u/2016/07/19/evolution-counter-trey/ which is where i got the above graphic.

I didn't see SC's post. He and I chatted in twitter DMs this week about a different play.

If there's a reason people who write about Michigan X's and O's are writing about power this week it's probably because Michigan ran Power a zillion times vs Rutgers. Check out my gfycat account: I've got 24 clips of power or counter trey from this game.

This felt mean-spirited and it was a reporter's phone. When you're in the road team's press conference room it's small and noisy with lots of people coming in late and reporters tapping on their laptops so it's common to stick your phone on record and put it up by the subjects. You're also supposed to put it in Do Not Disturb mode.

It wasn't me who took that thread down but if it was advertising something the advertising has to go through me. Creating a coupon just for MGoBlog readers is considered advertising. Email me at [email protected] and I would be happy to help this guy.

Whichever moderator took down the article please post the reason in this thread.

Hill got his after Indiana and we discussed long at the time. The way we have these out is after consistent performances. I didn't think anybody on the defense deserves to get an upgrade after Penn State even if long looked good. He doesn't have much more to show but we want to see it for a few more games.

Some aspects of human behavior, social practices such as culture, expressive forms such as art, music, dance, ritual, and religion, and technologies such as tool usage, cooking, shelter, and clothing are said to be cultural universals, found in all human societies. The concept of material culture covers the physical expressions of culture, such as technology, architecture and art, whereas the immaterial aspects of culture such as principles of social organization (including practices of political organization and social institutions), mythology, philosophy, literature (both written and oral), and science comprise the intangible cultural heritage of a society.

I appreciate the support but I agree with heel: since when does moderation make someone immune from criticism? I think I was right to issue a warning for the reasons I gave, and anyone is welcome to ask for and argue those reasons.

"I think the reason those papers get away with paywall articles is that they use politics as a way to cater to their fanbases."

the "those papers" was in reference to the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal mentioned in the comment he replied to. I've killed three threads in the last 2 weeks that started with disparaging mainstream news sources as propaganda, because faith in mainstream news is a current political battleground. I read what I took to be another trigger (followed by a ridiculous comment) for yet another descent into people who don't listen to each other arguing over whom to listen to, and slammed the door on it. Better I seem harsh on a well respected and well-known user than another round of that shit.

I didn't think this comment was innocuous, and I don't think I mistook its intention. If you think I was wrong convince me.

I know you and I appreciate your contributions here. I also anticipated the responses to the comment you made and figured if they saw I was coming down hard on You then some scrub who tried it would know he's doomed.

Infowars ("my news source is good your news source is bad rawr!") comments have been sparking the majority of the recent descents into political arguments on the board. During a week that we're already super testy I want to cut it off at the pass.

Ah but were they coached that way? It was all of the LBs reacting each time. Plus Michigan until now has been a very follow your fullback running team, and MSU was very reactive to that.

One of their favorite plays is lead zone and they mix in split zone and duo a bunch. Those plays don't tell you very much from watching the guards but the fullback gives it away. Once they noticed opponents were keying on the fullback it was time to Spring something like this that really punishes such Behavior.

Run lead zone to the front side. There's also a funny play that they brought out in 2015 where they pull to the backside and wham block the NT.

But this play is mostly a constraint against inside zone with a lead blocker.

By the way yes Indiana was trying to beat it by slanting into it but kept picking the wrong side to slant to, which made things even worse when their linebackers who are supposed to replace the slanters followed the fullback to the wrong side

I'm sorry but if Dantonio was coaching Michigan he'd have been fired as soon as it came to light that one of his staff was hiding rapes because the AD would be making that call instead of an advisory board dominated by football coaches they fired for running a lawless program.

If he didn't get the hook the second time 10% of his team attacked a dorm.

Disagree. They did the reasonable thing with Speight and did the reasonable thing with O'Korn, and put both in positions to succeed given their abilities. There are niggling things to pick at but you can't do any better for O'Korn than setting him up in the pocket for a play-action two-man route that gets the fleet-footed 6'8 guy open.

I don't think I've ever tried any of them but Franklin's. If you're going there, though, let me know because I live close by and have two kids at home with me.

Of course I'd be remiss if I didn't mention:

CHARRINGTON ORCHARDSFisher & Labes, Master Pressers

The neighborhood where I grew up (after moving a few times) was built on an old apple orchard so everyone had apple trees in their yards. There's a big apple tree at the end of our property that dropped apples on the neighbor's lawn, so my dad and neighbor (a Michigan booster) bought a cider presser in 1988.

This became an annual event for the neighborhood. Everyone brought their apples, and we'd supplement by buying a wagonload of fallen ones from Erwin Orchards (which was a mile and a half from the farm he lived on when I was born), and everyone would leave with fresh-pressed apple cider. The trick was we'd throw in a few pears to every batch.

All of the linebackers were injured. Two feet were inbounds. Woodson was getting paid. It should have been targeting. We weren't prepared for Mallett. Whoever heard of offsides on an onside kick? It was uncatchable. Lloyd asked for two seconds. The Big Ten schedulers screwed us. Don't ever let James Franklin near a clock. The Freeh Report...

I forgot the details but the possible forfeiture was due to some stupid eligibility snafu with a freshman safety (Artis Chambers) because his high school wouldn't sign paperwork for his diploma (possibly out of spite for not going to the local program) or something. It was a Big Ten not an NCAA issue so it only affected the PSU game. Because Chambers got some special teams snaps.

I pointed this out right after the segment and Ace admitted it was an oversight. I was grabbing all of those clips in the back of the store during the first two segments and got the Des PR and "Grbac to fire for it" and Dennis Bergkamp ready. I thought about telling them their lists are incomplete and inserting those anyway.

France. I lived there for a time, got introduced to WC soccer (and PSG) while there, and it would be nice to have some sporps team that does something other than pop my soul dong. Plus you get to yell "Go Blue!" a lot, sorta.

There are plenty. My favorite that I know for certain is in Michigan's playbook is the one that gives John Gruden a chub every time he sees it: Spider 2 Y Banana

End sees the fullback and crashes down, then the fullback is just like "Oh I'm sorry I was heading into the flat, pleased to introduce you to my friend Mr. Tailback." and then WHOMP the running back takes out the DE's knees and he's done. Now you've got an easy 1-2-3 half-field read for the QB with a 4th level of "ha ha I'll just run" if all three are covered.

Ohio State's OL is their problem too. The only difference is Ohio State's skill position players are vastly ahead of ours.

No team in the conference has a good OL this year except perhaps Wisconsin and maybe Iowa. The offenses that are doing well have some great athletes doing crazy stuff. Nobody on this offense is a Saquon Barkley or even a J.T. Barrett or Parris Campbell.

A statistically relevant sample is 1,000. If you get to 100 samples you might have something that could be backed up by other evidence.

If Michigan lost all of its close games the same way it might count as some evidence. For example in 2005 Michigan lost so many close games at the end (and non-close ones became so) that you could look at things that might be hurting them down the stretch: is their conditioning worse, or are they leaving players out there too long due to depth problems, etc. Or you might be able to show that a certain coach tends to have weird success in high-leverage situations and gets RPS wins in those situations (for example Greg Mattison kept Michigan in a game vs Northwestern once by winning high-leverage situations with frippery).

But you're still dealing with a small sample size and football games have so much that go into them--in and outside of the control of coaches--that picking out overarching trends is hard. In close games anything can make the difference: officiating, a key injury, a weird bounce, a fumble by a guy who never fumbles, etc. If you're actually trying to prove something, the outcomes are often less important than the larger data sets you get from stats. In many of these games (OSU 2016, MSU 2015) Michigan was vastly statistically more likely to win. On the other hand the Orange Bowl last year should have been a blowout against us, and the Utah game was also much closer than the stats suggest it was, and the Wisconsin game was closer than it should have been.

In the micro nothing in particular stands about about Michigan's close losses under Harbaugh except bad luck. Jerk-offs like to say "you make your own luck" but tautologically randomness is random, and inarguably part of the game of football. Speight didn't fumble a snap all year until he fumbled one against Ohio State. No punter ever did what Blake did until he did it. Amarah Darboh was an all-conference receiver who dropped the game-sealing pass at Iowa. Newsome was set to be Michigan's starting left tackle for 2016-2018 until he had one of the worst injuries in program history. Why do we have more bad luck than other schools? Bad luck.

Then 2014 OL recruiting was down because the conclusion of the 2013 season put Hoke's long-term viability on the line, and OL in particular look for stability since they usually don't play until the're in their 3rd or 4th years. They got Mason Cole and Juwann Bushell-Beatty. The first worked out, the second was a flier who didn't develop.

Seniors/RS juniors for 2017: Cole, who's good, and JBB, who isn't.

Then because Michigan couldn't hire Harbaugh until late December there was no time to rescue the 2015 class. They inherited Runyan,, and Grant Newsome a 4-star who was tucked away in Ivy League territory. Newsome was good until he was injured on a cheap play that should be outlawed. The staff added Ulizio, a flier who lost a year of development to illness and injury.

Juniors/RS sophomores for 2017: Runyan and Ulizio, who's more like a RS freshman..

The 2016 class would then have find some stars to fill most of the positions as redshirt freshmen, which is the first year you can really plausibly expect linemen to be serviceable. This staff (and it's not hard to pin this on Drevno) screwed the pooch on its 2016 OT recruiting. They lost Devery Hamilton at the last second, and held onto Swenson long after they knew they didn't want him: neither guy was replaced. Once Newsome was injured alarm bells were sounded about the 2017 OTs. They wanted 5-6 guys and got three, none of whom were OTs (unless Bredeson can become one).

So that meant tyring to find grad transfers or true freshmen to fill starting spots. They failed. Michigan lost Leatherwood to Alabama, had Isaiah Wilson flip to Georgia at the last second for the reason you think, lost Kai-Leon Herbert because they were pursuing so many top-tier guys over him, and who knows what happened with Mekhi Becton because they had him then suddenly lost him, and now he's the #1 true freshman to PFF. When Mecton fell apart they doubled down on Filiaga, who they hoped would be ready and wasn't. Also they hoped Stueber would be a Mason Cole but he isn't. The other guys were always development prospects.

C) Why in year 3, after recruiting a ton of QB's, are we still mired in shitty QB play?

Because the o-line sucks. and the first guy Harbaugh scouted and recruited is a RS freshman they probably don't want to ruin behind the line that sucks.

D) This is more of a meta, why when one of the MSU guys cheap shots us, don't we blitz adn destroy the MSU QB. Hard. Tit for tat.

lost to MSU on the most insane play in the history of Michigan in the most lopsidedly officiated game in the history of Michigan

Handily beat a bad MSU team in East Lansing

lost by a replay official's definition of an inch at Ohio State

wet fart game

How is that getting destroyed? Also: are you saying that Harbaugh's tragectory is the same as Hoke's? At this point in Hoke's career we were heading into the 27-for-27 game. Unless you're arguing Michigan is going to go 7-13 from now until December 2018, you're cherry-picking records to be an ass. Take your razor-blade filled candy and chew on it yourself before suggesting others try it.

If you think he might be able to save you some $ on a refinance (he probably can, it's worth a shot) go here https://www.homesurelending.com/mgoblog/, fill out the form, and mention when you talk to him you're trying to find a group of Rutgers tickets.

Otherwise just email him and ask him to keep you in mind if he needs to sell off a group of them for a fair price (remember: group tickets raises the rate a lot since that's a special need).

Michigan actually contracted the guy who used to sponsor these posts (TicketIQ is going through some turnover right now so we're letting that simmer) several years ago to help them maximize ticket prices. They have very good data on the secondary market and have adjusted their prices so that they're making out on season tickets better than the people who buy them can resell them. There's no reason to backtrack because they can blame Brandon when they keep prices at the same astronomic highs on even years, and blame MSU-OSU-ND home games for jacking them up on odd years.

No, 4 together makes it hard because you can't play the last minute game. Your best bet is finding someone who bought a bunch of seats together and didn't fill/had cancellations. Those aren't always on the secondary market because they look to fill with people who won't offend, e.g., the clients they're serving.

If you're, like, ever going to buy a home or refinance one, you should give Matt a ping. I don't know if he's got extra Rutgers seats but I wouldn't be surprised if he does.

Yes there will be. However in the past there have been more people for M-MSU than any other game who show up to tailgate and then see if they can find a ticket. Those last-minute seats won't drop below the online market until kickoff if any are left by then.

But if your worst case scenario is paying what you would pay tomorrow who cares right? If you are looking for two together that changes the math. You might be able to find a single seat with people who would rather sit with a Michigan fan for face value on Saturday. I really wish the app was up and running because this is the part of the market we really handle well. People are going to tailgate all day and have a seat they need to get rid of because so-and-so couldn't make it.

I read Kryk's book too. The limits were meant to keep teams from playing out-of-conference games, since the [Big 10]* didn't want to risk having its programs start doing all the things that, say, Notre Dame was doing: giving professional players scholarships and whatnot. Michigan at that point had rivalries going with Michigan State and Ohio State, and although Ohio State would end up joining the Big Ten during Michigan's hiatus, at the time of the split Yost and Stagg both knew those games were huge draws for Michigan.

Yeah the videogames have come far but they're VERY limited in the nuances that make these plays work or not. I don't have modern Madden, which Ace keeps telling me is way better, but NCAA 2014 basically works on a randomizer instead of subtley: they have a few potential results and corresponding animations, and which one gets executed depends on the game's settings and the players' characteristics. It looks like football, but you're really playing D&D (NTTAWWT).

Football is way more human. There's never been a play run exactly the same way or a defense that plays it exactly the same way. This is especially true for route running--the things that make a senior recevier way better than a freshman one are simply impossible for a computer to generate.

So I try to approach this from an overhead view: what were the coaches thinking when they drew it up, and then how did the players execute it on film. Using a videogame to do this would necessitate explainging a million things that computer AI did that isn't part of football, and the point of what's going on would just get lost in all of that.

I think you're at risk of oversimplifying things. There's more going on than that, and it goes into the kind of offense Michigan ran last year versus what they ran against Purdue.

Last year Michigan finished the season running a highly advanced, almost modern NFL-style offense. Watch Speight on this play and count the bounces (corresponding to reads):

FOUR reads. That's Tom Brady-level access to a passing offense when in college most teams rarely give their quarterback more than two passing reads before telling them to scramble. The Speight making that play is vastly above the highest hopes for O'Korn.

Speight has not been that guy this year, but we were running an offense the first three games that largely asked him to be. Against Purdue however they greatly simplified the passing game. Look at this one:

For a moment ignore Speight bugging out of his pocket too early to see the blitzer came and McKeon (his hot read) was opening up. If the TD pass to Khalid Hill is super complicated, this play is super easy. Schoenle is supposed to be running his snag route as a pick route, ie the point is to put Schoenle INTO coverage so Hill will pop wide open and get some YAC. The only thought process other than "pass to Hill when he gets open" is "if there's a SAM blitz hot read to McKeon" but that blitz was delayed and Speight didn't trust his pocket and he moved right on to the one thing this play really expects him to see.

That offense is what Michigan State and Wisconsin run because they don't trust their quarterbacks to survey the field and find the open guy in the milliseconds they have to process that information, nor their receivers to create space to throw it.

I think Michigan installed that offense for Speight because he's not been executing the Tom Brady offense, and Michigan felt Purdue's inexperienced defense wasn't going to be able to shut it down, then O'Korn was accidentally the recipient.

We're not judging either quarterback on their receivers' drops. This is all UFR and game review data.

Michigan ran it a few times against Florida but the timing wasn't always great. It's been part of the offense but I think they saw something about Purdue that they liked at the same time they saw the players were getting this down.

we still have dear diary in the schedule; i just don't like writing it and have two kids and a lot more interesting things to write about now, and we tend to have other content get delayed into its spot.

Yeah that's an effect of the podcast being on a service rather than our own servers. The upside though is that we're not forcing our poor site's server to feed 10,000 to 20,000 copies of a 65-mb file all at the same time.

Some ways around that at work:

I always post the link to the mp3 file. You should be able to just download that and play it on any music player.

Subscribe using a podcast app like iTunes or (what i use on my android) Podcast Republic. it should skip your work's computers altogether and then you just play it off your phone.

If you can't use your company wifi and don't want to spend the data on your plan, the podcasts are always uploaded to podbean late late at night and on a regular schedule, so just check your phone before you leave the house in the morning and download it then. The article won't post until 8-ish on Mondays, Fridays and (on gamedays) Saturdays. But the podcast goes up between 7pm and 1 am the night before.

I listen to a bunch of podcasts and the only one i think beats our production quality is Hardcore History--and that guy's been at it way longer and takes ages to clean it up before posting.

We run the whole podcast through a compressor 3 times but yeah, Brian has a pretty deep voice and he tends to modulate it a huge amount, so when David's in there editing he would have to take hours upon hours to manually bring all of those up, or run a process that destroys all the nuance and sounds terrrible. What can you do: he's a football expert, not a radio voice. Would you rather have my higher, easier to hear voice with less football knowledge?

This week I think it was especially pronounced for three reasons:

WTKA recorded Matt's new ad, not us, so they maximized the volume on that and I just used it. Radio listeners are used to these walloping loud ads being 1/4 more decibels than the content but not podcast listeners with their earbuds in. When I made that the first read of the 2nd break it was jarring.

Brian was really sick this week. We cut out all the hacking and stuff but you know how you sound when you've got a flu: now imagine trying to talk for 2 hours like that. The vast majority of that recording then is in the lows, where even high volume is hard to hear for an eardrum that's been in use for 30+ years

So when you put 1 after 2 you got a huge difference. We've instructed David to be more careful of that, and to include the ads when he compresses the podcast.

Man did you even see his comments? Literally espousing white supremacist propaganda. I've never seen a worse case on here.

The standard is facts and basic human decency, not some magic middle ground between parties that shifts whenever they do. If you want a message board that treats racists and people who call racists racists equally, you're in the wrong place.

Bosshawg is part of a community of fans keeping the videogame NCAA 2014 alive by updating rosters annually and creating a few teams so, e.g., Michigan doesn't have to dress in those awful adidas era things. He just released the new Michigan team.

Bo actually called them OLBs after awhile. The modernization you refer to occurred around 1977, at least in what Michigan's terminology became. Tom Seabron, who was a friend of my dad, was called an "Outside Linebacker" his whole Michigan career. He backed up Dominic Tedesco, who's called an OLB as a senior and a DE prior to that.

Doesn't have to be bubble. They've got look-back vertical routes in the playbook and that very simple WR toss that I wouldn't even call a bubble because it's not blocked--it's just throwing across the LOS to a receiver whose DB is playing off. Darboh was money on those, and Black ran them well this year.

Generally patience is good but it depends on what offense you are running. Power and Zone are best when you set up your blocks, require patient runners. ISOs are more about blasting forth. However the longer you wait against a stacked front the more time those safeties have to react and those linebackers have to get off their blocks. You want to see where the Gap is and hit it when it's there. Patience matters because it's not always there right away